Conflicting paradigms in the development of Slovene pedagogy

Dr. Zdenko Medveš

Summary:  The paper Socialist pedagogy: caught between the myth of the fairness of the unified school and cultural hegemony (Medveš 2015) illustrated developments in Yugoslav education policy between 1945 and 1990 and the role of pedagogical science in this. The present paper offers the other side of this picture: the development of key ideas in pedagogical science and the influence of politics on it. Pedagogical science in Slovenia was paradigmatically plural even in the period of enforced political conformity, a fact that shows the unfoundedness of the thesis that it only developed within ideological and political discourse, let alone that it was subordinated to it. It is easier to demonstrate that it developed at odds with politics and that it was entirely comparable to the development of pedagogy across central Europe, if we leave aside political interference. The liberalism in the politics of the 1960s greatly encouraged creativity in pedagogical science; the clash of politics with liberalism in the 1970s acted as a brake to it. The second conference of Slovene pedagogues in Bled in 1971 provides evidence of the existence of three pedagogical paradigms in post-war development: socially critical pedagogy, humanistic/cultural pedagogy and reform pedagogy. The socially critical and humanistic paradigms became embroiled in theoretical conflicts which, owing.